System redundancy is a technique that has been used for a long time to prevent the possible faults that may arise in electrical systems due to continued use.
It is presented as a solution to protection and reliability problems. In the redundant systems the same process is responsible for being performed in more than one station because if for any reason one stopped working or were to collapse, another one would immediately have to take its place and perform the tasks of the former.
A fault in the simplest element of a system of this type could have catastrophic consequences. For that reason, element duplication, the establishment of different paths between the same network elements, use of auxiliary power generators, a wide range of solutions assuring the stability of the system, are normally used.
Depending on the complexity, the cost, the consequences of a fault in a electrical system the redundancy can be approached in different ways and one of them consists of preparing a secondary electrical system that is a replica of the first which starts operating in the event of a fault in the main equipment, immediately replacing it. The coordination between the feed of said systems in the event of a fault must be approached by means of human intervention because the solutions lies in feeding them either from different sources and activating one upon detecting a fault in the one feeding the main electrical system, or from the same power source and connecting the secondary electrical system upon detecting a fault in the main system.
The power sources for these systems generally consist of multiple sockets such as the one described in EP2226905 and they often entail certain control measures or added functions like in patent KR20110056072, which describes the inclusion of a display in which, for example, the consumption is viewed, or United States patent US20070086126, where the designed circuitry seeks to cut off or allow the power supply to the socket depending on whether it detects short circuits or other electrical faults that could be dangerous.
United States patent US20100164284 establishes a master-slave relationship between the different outlets of a multiple socket such that it can remotely control switching on/off a series of electrical equipment associated with the main system. Nevertheless, the objective sought in this case is power saving.
All the proposed solutions require human intervention for using them with secondary equipment and in the event of having external devices connected to the main electrical system they do not propose any solution that does not lie in duplicating all the devices in the secondary electrical system. A device which allows making electrical systems redundant automatically and optimizing the duplication of devices without affecting the costs and complexity of internally handling the equipment is therefore necessary.